The White House on Dec. 8 launched a dashboard to track nonfatal opioid overdoses at the state and county level, offering those on the front line of the opioid epidemic a better look at the hardest-hit areas and where to target lifesaving resources.
"Before today, the best available data at our disposal was the number of Americans dying from an overdose, which was too late to help save a life," Rahul Gupta, MD, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in a news release. "With this new dashboard, we can now provide first responders, clinicians and policymakers with real-time, actionable information that will improve our response and save lives."
The map shows the population rate of nonfatal opioid overdoses in a community, the average number of naloxone administrations per patient, the average time it takes for emergency medical services to reach an overdose patient, and the percentage of nonfatal opioid overdose patients who are not taken to a medical facility for treatment.
Data will be updated every Monday with a two-week lag, White House officials said. The dashboard will "continue to evolve over the coming year" and will eventually feature surveillance of nonfatal overdoses from other drugs.